Hanging Time

82

It was almost midnight. In the dark, Jason sat in his favorite armchair, listening to the nine carefully restored antique clocks prominently displayed on bookcases and tables around his living room. The clocks all ticked in a slightly different rhythm. No matter how many times he adjusted them, he could not get them to keep exactly the same time. It took a full ten minutes of bongs and dongs in nine different tones before they all got through striking the hour. He had no idea which one, if any, had the correct time. If he wanted the correct time, he had to consult his quartz watch.

At this moment, some five, ten, fifteen minutes before midnight, he didn’t give a damn about the correct time. He was waiting for the 108 strikes that would proclaim the end of his thirty-ninth birthday. He felt very alone.

One of the occupational hazards of being a psychiatrist was that very few of the people in his life, even those he’d seen regularly for many years, knew anything about him. Today not one of his patients had any idea it was his birthday. The day had passed with no office party, no congratulations, only a few cards, no cake. He did get a call from his parents bemoaning the fact that he had produced no children and never came to visit. It didn’t occur to them to ask him, or take him, to dinner. They sat on extension phones in different rooms of their Bronx apartment where they had lived for forty-three years, talking at the same time. They promised to send Jason a birthday card as soon as they found one they both liked.

But all of that he’d sorted out long ago. What really bothered him was that even though he had spoken to her twice that day, he desperately missed Emma. And his best friend Charles was furious at him. Further, he seemed to have misread the Honiger-Stanton case right from the beginning and all the way through. That was puzzling. He didn’t often get things wrong. He and April Woo had arranged to have dinner together the next night to talk the case over. He was looking forward to it.

Outside, it began to rain. Lightning snaked across the sky above the Hudson River, illuminating the New Jersey horizon for an instant. Thunder reverberated. Jason brooded about the case, about Camille under observation at Bellevue. Something worried him about the story April had told him when she called from the hospital two hours earlier. He didn’t see how the young woman he had diagnosed as gentle and nurturing just that morning—the woman who had told him she wanted to be like Doctor Dolittle—had made a very serious attempt at strangling her sister at five-thirty in the afternoon.

Camille had appeared frightened, vulnerable, fragile. How did he miss her rage? She must have lied. Well, all patients lied. Everybody he knew lied. Still, getting beyond the lies to the truth was his job.

Jason sat there in the dark, trying to work it out. Camille said she always did whatever Milicia told her to. Jason believed that was true. What if Milicia knew the police were outside and deliberately provoked Camille to violence? What if Milicia had threatened or attacked her in some way and Camille acted to protect herself? The thunder rumbled closer. Rain pelted down, drenching the city for the second time in a week. It was the storm season. Jason had the urge to call Emma, to thank her again for her gift. Find out how she was. Hear her voice again, no matter how much it hurt. The phone rang before he had a chance to decide if that was a good idea. He reached to answer it.

“Did I wake you?” Charles demanded.

“No.” Jason was disappointed. He’d been thinking about Emma, more than half hoped it was her.

“Are you alone?”

“Yeah, I’m alone. What’s up, Charles?”

There was a lengthy silence. “Look, I’m sorry I ripped into you today.” Charles sounded sorry.

“That’s okay. I’d probably have felt the same.”

“We’ve been friends for a long time.”

“Yes, we have. Thanks for calling.”

“That’s not the only reason I called.”

“Oh, what’s up?”

There was a short pause, then Charles spoke. His voice had a catch in it. “The shirt came back from the laundry.”

“The shirt? What shirt?” Jason searched his memory for a shirt.

“Milicia gave a shirt to Brenda in Southampton. The Saturday night before you got there. The night the first woman was murdered. It was a weekend gift, a big white shirt. I have it in my hand.”

“Was that the shirt Brenda was wearing the day I came?”

“Yes. Brenda must have worn it to appear appropriately grateful. It was way too big for her.”

Jason remembered. “Yes.”

“Look, I don’t know if it’s the one the police were looking for. It doesn’t have a store label in it. But I wanted you to know. And Jason—happy birthday.”

Jason closed his eyes. “Thanks, I appreciate it. I’ll call the detective on the case and let her know.”

The first clock began to strike the hour. Then the second. Suddenly the room went into its bonging frenzy. Jason took the portable phone with him and shut the connecting doors. Now he couldn’t see the lightning, or the river, the trees on Riverside Drive shuddering in the wind, or the crooked horizon of New Jersey. He went into the kitchen and turned on the light. It was midnight, but Jason dialed April’s work number anyway. The polite voice that answered said Detective Woo was not there, was off tomorrow. He had no idea what her home number was.